Gregory Adams

so i finally did my first activation last weekend up on a local summit that only worth 2 points, nothing fancy but i figured id start small before attempting anything serious. brought my KX2 and a homebrew EFHW that i threw up in an inverted V off a fishing pole and honestly the whole thing went smoother than i expected. made my 4 contacts pretty quick on 40m and even worked a couple guys on 20 who were actively chasing which was cool to see the system actually working in real time. couple things i wasnt sure about though -- when i uploaded my log to SOTAdata i noticed my summit reference was showing up right but one of the chasers activated the same summit the day before and his contacts showed up under a slightly different reference format, like he had a slash somewhere i didnt. is that just a display thing or did one of us enter it wrong? also im curious how other people handle the self-spotting thing, i used the reflector app on my phone but signal up there was sketchy and it felt like kind of a pain. do most activators just deal with that or is there a better way

General isnt that bad honestly. I went from Tech to General in about 3 weeks of casual studying, like 20-30 minutes a night on HamStudy and reading through the ARRL General manual. The electrical theory questions look scarier than they are because a lot of them you can just memorize the answer without really understanding the math behind it, which isnt ideal but it works for passing the test. The propagation stuff is actually pretty interesting once you start reading about it, 20 meters behaves totally different from 40 at night and once that clicks the questions kind of answer themselves. As for equipment yeah you will almost certainly need a different radio, your HT isnt going to do HF. Most people start with something like an IC-7300 or a used FT-857 or whatever fits the budget. The 857 does VHF and UHF too which some people like. Just dont go buy anything until you actually have the ticket in hand, gives you time to research properly.

honestly what helped me more than anything was just recording myself. plugged a cheap recorder into the monitor output and listened back and was kind of horrified lol. i was way closer to the mic than i thought and the plosives on P and B sounds were pretty bad. fixed my mic distance and technique and got a lot better reports after that the compression debate is real though, ive seen it get pretty heated on some forums. i run mine fairly light and just try to get a solid clean signal rather than trying to squeeze every last watt of average power out. on contest weekends when the bands are crowded i might bump it a little but for normal operating i'd rather sound natural

ok so i just got my technician license last month and ive been trying to get on the local 2m repeater but i keep hearing people talk and nobody hears me back. i can hear the repeater tail when it kerchunks so i know im hitting it, or at least i think i am. somebody at the club meeting mentioned CTCSS and i kind of nodded along like i understood but honestly i have no idea what tone to use or even how to program it into my baofeng. the repeater listing on repeaterbook just says 100.0 but i dont know if thats the input tone or output tone or both or what. also is there like a rule about not just kerchunking a repeater over and over to test? someone made a comment and i wasnt sure if i did something wrong

im in the same boat as you, got my tech a few months back. what helped me was just downloading the ARRL band plan and keeping it open on my phone when im thinking about HF stuff. the 10m phone allocation for techs is real and ive actually made a couple contacts on 28.4 when the solar flux was decent. its not as limited as it sounds once you get into it

oh man i was in the exact same boat like 6 months ago. the 44 contact thing freaked me out but i actually hit it in about an hour and a half on 40m. the hunter community is super friendly and they're very patient with new activators. one thing i will say — double check that your specific WMA actually has an approved WWFF reference before you go, sometimes there are areas that look like they should be in the database but arnt yet or the boundaries are different than you'd expect. i drove out once and realized i was standing in the wrong spot technically. the wwff.cc map is your friend, zoom in and make sure your operating spot falls inside the reference boundary.

Finally decided to take the plunge and upgrade to Extra Class after being General for 3 years. The new 2024-2028 question pool looks pretty intimidating with all the advanced theory. What study methods have actually worked for you? I've heard mixed reviews about just memorizing answers vs really understanding the theory. Also wondering if the Gordon West book is still the gold standard or if there are better options now. Any specific practice test sites that helped you pass on the first try? Thanks for any guidance - want to get those extra privileges on 80/40m for DXing!

so ive been using a cheap RTL-SDR v3 dongle for a while now and honestly its been pretty great for VHF/UHF stuff, ADS-B, decoding NOAA weather sats, all that. but lately ive been wanting to dig into HF more and the direct sampling mode on the v3 is just... not great. its functional but the noise floor is pretty rough and i keep reading that the SDRplay RSP1C is a significant step up for HF work. my question is basically whether the jump from like $30 to $130 or whatever the RSP1C goes for now is actually noticeable in real use or if im just going to be disappointed because my antenna situation isnt good enough to see the difference anyway. running a random wire out the back window right now, maybe 40 feet, not a great ground. i use SDR# and HDSDR mostly, occasionally mess around with SDR-Console. not really interested in the HackRF for now since i dont need the transmit side and the receive performance always gets knocked in comparisons. unless im wrong about that and someone has a different take. anyway curious what people who have actually owned both think rather than just spec sheet comparisons

so ive been licensed for about 4 months now and i get on the air pretty regularly but there are so many abbreviations being thrown around that i honestly only understand maybe half of what people are saying. like i know QSL means confirmed and QTH is location, those were drilled into me for the test. but then someone will say something like QRM or QRN and i kinda just nod along and hope context fills in the gaps. is there like a master list somewhere or do people just pick these up over time? also some guys on HF use stuff that isnt even Q codes, like they'll say 73 or 88 or say someone is an OM and i have no idea if im supposed to respond a certain way. its not a huge deal but i feel dumb sometimes when someone asks me something and i have to ask them to repeat it three times just because i didnt catch the abbreviation

so i finally worked up the nerve to check in on the local tuesday night net after just listening for like three months. been licensed since spring but honestly the whole net procedure thing intimidated me more than i expected. anyway the net control called for check ins and i keyed up and gave my call but then he asked if i had traffic and i just kind of... froze and said no but then rambled something about being new and it just felt awkward. nobody was rude or anything but i could tell i kind of stepped on the flow a little. i guess my question is — is there like a standard way you're supposed to check in that i should have known? i feel like i missed something obvious. also does traffic mean actual formal written messages or can it be like a question you want to ask the group? ive been reading stuff online but everyone seems to assume you already know how nets work

good that you're finally doing this, better late than never honestly. I went through the exact same thing with the rig choice and ended up pulling the 857 out of my go-kit after the first couple of activations. great radio but you're right about the power draw, especially if you're running it anywhere near full power on HF. ended up going with an ic-7100 for a while and now mostly use an xiegu g90 for the HF side of things. lighter, way more efficient, does everything i actually need in the field. for power i run a 40ah lithium battery now but started with a sealed lead acid similar to what you have. the SLA is fine, just heavy. definitely put a load on it and see how long it actually lasts before you need it for real. nothing worse than finding out your battery is half dead at 2am during an actual event. one thing nobody told me when i was building mine out -- dont forget the non-radio stuff. feedline, connectors, a roll of electrical tape, small multimeter, headlamp, logbook and pencil. i showed up to my first ARES activation with a beautiful radio setup and no way to write anything down. felt like an idiot.

the LM386 motorboating thing is super common, almost always a decoupling problem. put a 0.047uF cap directly across the supply pins of the chip itself, as close to the body as you can get on perfboard. also try a 10 ohm resistor in series with the supply to the chip with another 100uF on the chip side of that resistor. basically you're making a little RC filter right at the chip. that usually kills the motorboating dead. hum with antenna disconnected does sound like either a ground loop or you're picking up mains from somewhere nearby. how are you powering it, wall wart or battery? if wall wart try running on a 9v battery temporarily just to rule that out. i built something similar a few years ago and spent like two evenings chasing a hum that turned out to be my bench power supply inducing into the circuit through a shared ground path. wasnt even connected electrically, just proximity.

so I just passed my technician exam last week and I've been trying to figure out what handheld to get as my first radio. everyone keeps saying baofeng and I know they have a bad reputation with some people but the price is hard to argue with when you're just starting out and not sure if you'll even stick with the hobby long term but then I started reading about the yaesu FT-60 and the wouxun stuff and now im more confused than when I started. like does it actually matter that much for just hitting local repeaters and maybe some simplex? I dont really have any specific plans yet just want to get on the air and start learning. would love to hear what people actually use day to day and whether I'd regret going cheap

i used the Gordon West study book and liked it a lot, its written more conversationally than the arrl one i thought. passed first try with a decent score. that said my brother just used hamstudy exclusively and also passed so i dont think the specific material matters as much as just putting in the time with the practice tests honestly.

i just passed mine like three weeks ago, still kind of in shock lol. i dont have any engineering background either and i just used the question pool and watched some YouTube videos on the stuff i really didnt get. the filter theory questions were the ones that tripped me up most in practice but there's really only so many variations of them on the actual pool so if you drill enough you'll recognize them. the privileges are nice. already found a frequency on 75 meters i can use now that was off limits before so that alone felt worth it to me.

i just passed mine like two months ago so this is pretty fresh for me. i used the Ham Radio Prep app and thought it was pretty good, it kind of figures out which questions you keep getting wrong and drills those more which helped me a lot. theres also a free version i think but i just paid for the full thing, wasnt that expensive. honestly the hardest part for me wasnt the studying it was finding an actual test session nearby that worked with my schedule. check the ARRL exam search thing, some clubs do them pretty regularly but in my area it was a bit of a wait. some of them do remote testing online now too which might be easier depending on where you live.

so ive been messing around with an arduino mega for the past few weeks trying to get it to handle my antenna switching automatically based on which band i select on the radio. right now i have a manual coax switch and honestly its fine but i keep forgetting to switch over and then wonder why my SWR is spiking. figured this would be a fun project and also maybe learn something. the basic idea is to read CAT commands coming off the 7300 via USB, parse out the frequency, and then fire the appropriate relay to connect the right antenna. i have a 4-relay module from amazon thats been sitting in a drawer forever so figured id use that. my question is mostly around the CAT side of things — has anyone done this with an IC-7300 specifically? i found some icom CI-V stuff online but the documentation is kind of all over the place and im not sure if im supposed to be sniffing the serial traffic or if there's a cleaner way to just query the rig directly. also wondering if i should just bite the bullet and use a raspberry pi instead since it has more horsepower and i could probably find a python library that already handles CI-V. arduino feels more appropriate for the relay control stuff though. maybe both? i dunno, open to suggestions

yeah ive done almost exactly this with a yaesu g-450a. the noise thing is real — i tried just averaging and it helped but i still got occasional wild jumps, ended up putting a 100nf cap from the wiper to ground and that cleaned it up considerably. also worth making sure your arduino ground is tied to the rotator controller ground or youll chase your tail forever with floating reference issues. the pi zero idea is not overkill at all honestly, i went that direction after a while because being able to hit a webpage from anywhere in the house and point the beam is genuinely useful. just ran a simple flask app, nothing fancy. the latency from the web interface to actual motor movement is a little sluggish but for HF beams nobody cares. if you were doing satellite work or something fast-moving youd probably want something more direct. one thing i wish id done earlier is add a soft stop in software before the hardware limits, learned that lesson the hard way when my heading got confused and the motor ran into the stop at full speed. nothing broke but it was not a good sound

so ive been messing around with this for a few weeks now and im making progress but hitting some walls. basically i want to use an arduino mega to drive my rotator controller instead of using the manual knob all the time. the rotator is an old hygain T2X and the controller has the feedback pot in it already so in theory i should be able to read the voltage off that and figure out the bearing. my problem is the ADC on the arduino is picking up a ton of noise, like the readings are jumping around by 10-15 counts even with nothing changing. i added a 100uf cap across the pot wiper to ground and it helped a little but not enough. running the thing off USB power from my laptop and wondering if thats part of the issue. also the motor drive side im just using a relay module for now which works but theres definitely some relay chatter getting into the analog side when the motor runs. longer term i want to tie this into hamlib so i can point the beam from the logging software automatically but im not there yet. just trying to get stable bearing readings first. anyone gone down this road before?

Oh man I remember this exact stage, it was maddening for me too. For the contact gap on the Bencher, start super small — like just barely a business card thickness or even less. A lot of people open it too wide thinking it needs room and then you end up fighting the paddle the whole time. Tension is personal but start on the lighter side and work up from there. As for sending vs receiving — honestly just do both at the same time from the start. Trying to separate them completely doesn't really work the way your brain learns CW. When you practice on LCWO, after each session just spend 5-10 minutes sending the same characters back with your paddle even if it sounds terrible. Your hand and your ear need to learn together. The mushiness usually goes away once the muscle memory kicks in, it just takes longer than you'd think. Stick with it, 10 wpm QSOs are totally out there and people are patient with newer CW ops.

so ive been putting this off for way too long but last weekend i finally cut and hung a 40m dipole out of some 14 gauge stranded wire i had sitting in the garage. center insulator is just a piece of Schedule 40 PVC i drilled through, nothing fancy. coax goes straight down to a 1:1 choke balun i wound myself on an FT240-43 core, about 11 turns of RG-8X. the thing actually works, SWR is sitting around 1.4:1 at the bottom of the band which is where i want it, creeps up to about 2.8 at the top but my tuner handles it fine. my question is more about height — right now its only about 22 feet at the apex in an inverted V configuration, feedpoint angle is maybe 120 degrees? its strung between my chimney and a tree. i keep reading conflicting stuff about whether the inverted V is actually worse than a flat top at that height or if its basically a wash. anyone actually done back to back testing on this or is it just forum mythology at this point

honestly i was in the same boat when i started. what helped me was just memorizing the full NATO list and then using it every single time i gave my call, even when i probably didnt need to. felt a little silly at first but after a few weeks it was totally automatic and now i dont even think about it. the awkward phase doesnt last that long

the dots and dashes thing — yeah dont do that. seriously just dont. your brain will end up counting and once you start counting youll never get fast enough to actually have a QSO. you want to hear each character as a sound, like how a word sounds to you, not something you decode piece by piece. took me a long time to unlearn the counting habit when i first started and it was a real pain. for the koch method, yeah basically you start with two characters — traditionally K and M because theyre pretty distinct sounding — and you drill them at whatever speed you want to eventually operate at, like 15 or 20 wpm, but with long spaces between characters so you have time to think. the idea is your brain learns the sound at real speed from day one instead of at some crawling pace you later have to speed up from. LCWO dot net is probably the best free thing out there for this, its a little clunky looking but it works well. also the app Morse Mania is decent for mobile if you want something on your phone. just do like 15 minutes a day consistently, more than that and your brain kind of saturates. people underestimate how much the consistency matters vs grinding for an hour once a week